EVENT

DONORS AND PARTNERS

VISITORS

Sustainable Livelihoods - Developments, Reflections and the Future

posted Jan 23, 2017, 4:36 AM by SUSDEC A

Robert Chambers

Origins
and spread

Although it has an earlier history, it
was probably only in the 1970s that the term livelihood began significantly to
enter the development lexicon. It was
used to offset the urban and industrial biases of the dominant terms and
concepts of employment, jobs, workplace and income in cash. Livelihood, in contrast, could encompass the
multifarious activities and sources of support typical especially of poor rural
and agricultural households.

When the Sustainable
rural livelihoods: practical concepts for the 21st century paper was
published in 1992 (Chambers and Conway 1992), “sustainable livelihood” had
already been around for at least six years.
It was developed and gained currency through several
initiatives. It was discussed in IIED in 1985. IIED’s Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods
programme led by Gordon Conway was established in 1986 and Richard
Sandbrook, the Director of IIED, played a part in making sustainable
livelihoods a theme of the large “Only One Earth Conference on Sustainable
Development” convened in April 1987. The
papers of that conference were published
as The Greening of Aid: sustainable livelihoods in practice (Conroy and
Litvinoff eds 1988).

“Sustainable livelihood” was adopted and
developed as a concept by the Advisory Panel on Food Security, Agriculture,
Forestry and Environment of the World Commission on Environment and Development
(WCD - the Brundtland Commission), meeting in 1986. The Panel elaborated this as “sustainable
livelihood security” in the opening pages of its report Food 2000 (WCED
1987a). The Commission itself, in its
report, Our Common Future (WCED 1987b),
began with older thinking and language with “jobs” (e.g pages 43,
49), but shifted substantially to the
use of “livelihood”. It speaks of “securing the livelihoods of the rural poor”
(p.130), maintaining and even enhancing
agricultural productivity and “the livelihoods of all rural dwellers” (p.133),
and “securing the livelihoods of the rural poor” (p.130). It uses the expressions “adequate
livelihood”, “livelihood opportunities”, and “livelihood security” (ibid p.40
and p.129; p.54 and p.142; and p.118 and p.129 respectively). Agriculture “lacks policies to ensure that
food is produced where it is needed and in a manner that sustains the
livelihoods of the rural poor” (p.118).
Sustainable livelihoods are mentioned twice: “Shifting production to
food-deficit countries and to the resource-poor farmers within those countries
is a way of securing sustainable livelihoods" (p.129) and “Providing
sustainable livelihoods for resource-poor farmers presents a special challenge
for agricultural research” (p.138 ).

After the WCD there was then a hiatus.
It was only some five years later that sustainable livelihoods began to take
off as a practical concept. A succession
of influential organisations picked up the term, used it, gave it meanings and
put it to uses which fitted their needs and purposes. Among these were OXFAM in 1993, CARE, the International Institute for
Sustainable Development IISD) in Canada, and UNDP. Perhaps most significant and influential was
the adoption of a sustainable livelihoods framework by DFID in its 1997 White
Paper on International Development (DFID 1997) which made it an approach
for achieving the elimination of poverty.
DFID established a Sustainable Livelihoods Support Office and promoted
use of sustainable livelihoods approaches (SLA), especially in natural
resources management.

In parallel a succession of research
programmes were launched and bore fruit.
In 1994 the Society for
International Development launched a 3-year programme in 19 countries on
Sustainable Livelihoods and People’s Everyday Economics, one purpose of which
was to develop further the theory of the sustainable livelihoods approach to
sustainable development[1]. More significant was research sponsored by
DFID. One project was carried out by
IDS, the Poverty Research Unit at Sussex, and IIED, with fieldwork in
Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Mali and Zimbabwe.
ODI conducted extensive analysis of SLs. Together with DFID itself,
these organisations published whole series of empirical and analytical papers
which made substantial contributions to understanding and practice.

Conceptual
evolution and diversity

Researchers and organisations took the
skeleton of the two words and put flesh on it.

The most influential elaboration and
definition of dimensions, categories and connections was that of an ecologist,
Ian Scoones, in his 1998 Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: a framework for
analysis. OXFAM and DFID came to use
variants of the Scoones diagram. Its framework with five headings has, with
minor modifications, been widely adopted and adapted. The most commonly used version has been that
of DFID:

As it spread and evolved, the framework
was perhaps best known for its identification of the five “capitals” as
livelihood resources – natural capital, physical capital, economic/financial capital,
human capital and social capital. It was
also important that it made explicit the significance of influence, access,
structures and processes. DFID defined sustainable livelihoods, following the
paper above as:

“A
livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets and activities required for a
means of living. A livelihood is
sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and
maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets both now and in the future,
while not undermining the natural resource base”

This reduces the strength of the
sustainability requirement. Producing
net benefits for others was considered an unrealistic demand (Carney with
others 1999:8). Not surprisingly, this
also left out the implications for those who are not poor. For its part OXFAM made to help secure “the
right to a sustainable livelihood” as one of its five corporate aims. (ibid: 11).

Dimensions of sustainable livelihoods
have been explored by numerous authors.

Reinforcement
of the concept and relevant insights have come from social anthropological
field research. Two rich sources are
Susanna Davies’ Adaptable Livelihoods: coping with food insecurity in the
Malian Sahel (1996) andPekka Seppala’s Diversification and
Accumulation in Rural Tanzania: anthropological perspectives on village
economics (1998). Both reveal and illustrate diversity,
complexity, flexibility and resilience in the livelihood strategies and
activities of rural people. Both
demonstrate how highly seasonal these are.
Davies shows how poor people juggle between a range of different
requirements and how immediate food consumption (contrary to Maslow’s hierarchy
of human needs, and contrary to the “food-first” approach) is not always given
priority as people make finely balanced trade-offs between short- and
longer-term needs (ibid: 18-19; 309).

The
comprehensiveness of the “capitals” has been questioned. Though not concerned with a SL framework,
Keppala introduces cultural “capitals”, which he identifies in the context of
his study as religion, spirit possession, tradition/age, wisdom, politics,
education and youth culture. He
discusses how these can rival and be in conflict with economic “capitals”
(ibid: 114-133). Baumann and Sinha (2001) make a persuasive
case for adding political capital, which they defined broadly as “the ability
to use power in support of political or economic positions and so enhance
livelihoods”. With evidence from field
research on watershed development in India they argued that power and influence
are traded with other capitals, especially financial through corruption. They point out that political capital is
critical for understanding why poverty-focussed programmes are often captured
illicitly and fail to benefit the poor, and how the poor can be supported to
enhance their own, legitimate, political capital.

Diversity
of livelihood sources and strategies has been repeatedly pointed out,
emphasised and illustrated (e.g. Hussein and Nelson 1998; Ellis 1999). Participatory analysis of marketed naturally
available rural products could produce a list of over 60 in Namibia and well
over 100 in the Philippines (Bennett 2002: 73).
Strategies reviewed include agricultural intensification (Carswell
1997), migration (McDowell and de Haan
1997) and those of special groups such as the disabled. Women’s livelihood strategies received
attention (e.g. Swantz 1995). Field
research has stressed the marked seasonality of livelihood activities.

Range
of applications

Sustainable livelihoods have proved
versatile in their relevance and application.
They have provided organising concepts in relation to a range of
subjects. The most common have been
natural resources and agriculture, for example household food security and
environmental sustainability in farming systems research (Drinkwater and McEwan
1994; Carswell 1997). They have been applied in different contexts, for example
coastal environments (IMM et al 2000).
Although “rural” often appears in the titles of papers, sustainable
livelihoods apply also in urban contexts.
The relationships between SLs and human rights have been explored by Moser and Norton (2001). Several studies have discussed implications
for policy (e.g. Hussein and Nelson 1998; Shankland 2000 ), and in particular
with structural adjustment (Ahmed with Lipton 1997), with the “rights and the new architecture of
aid” (Farrington 2001), with sectoral policies, and with Poverty Reduction
Strategy Papers (PRSPs) (Norton and Foster 2001). Human Development Reports have taken
sustainable livelihoods as their organising theme, for example in Jordan.

Strengths
and weaknesses

Reviews of experience with the SLs
framework (e.g. Ashley and Carney 1999; Farrington 2001) have pointed to
strengths and weaknesses but have come out quite strongly positive.

Among the strengths of the SL approach
has proved to be its people-centredness and poverty Orientation. Starting as it does with the vulnerability
context of shocks, trends and seasonality, listing the five (or six with
political) capitals, including influence and access to resources and services,
taking account of structures and processes, giving space for livelihood
strategies (in the plural), and allowing for multiple livelihood outcomes, it
has a complexity and comprehensiveness which nonetheless can be presented in a memorable
diagram. With this comprehensiveness, it belongs to no discipline. It is neutral ground on which all can meet,
and where all can find a familiar patch. Almost every development professional
can identify with one of the five capitals – natural capital (geographers,
resource economists, ecologists, foresters, agriculturalists, soils scientistS),
physical capital (engineers, physical planners), human capital
(educationalists, health professionals),
financial capital (economists) and social capital (social scientists, social
development specialists). And if
political capital is added, there is a place too for political scientists. In
his review, John Farrington (2001) added that the SL approach provided a
reality check. Summing up its advantages
he wrote:

"SL
approaches put the poor at the centre of analysis and aim to identify
interventions to meet their needs and opportunities in ways not dominated by
individual sectors or disciplines. Part
of the value of a SL approach therefore lies in providing an inclusive and
non-threatening process by which the
capacity of development specialists to think beyond conventional sectoral or
disciplinary boundaries can be enhanced. This is in addition to whatever
improved products it achieves in
terms of e.g. better design of the interventions themselves”

A
final advantage is flexibility and the ease with which it can be made more
comprehensive and realistic by adding dimensions.

Weaknesses have also become
evident. In practice, the household has
usually been taken as the unit of analysis, which tends to overlook gender
issues including intra-house distribution and dynamics. The various frameworks have tended to be
difficult for some of those who come to
sustainable livelihoods for the first time.
They can be constraining when interpreted too rigidly, especially with
the analysis of field data, and when the categories, for example the capitals,
are treated as boxes into which realities must be fitted rather than useful
checklists to ensure coverage of significant reality. Further weaknesses (see below) have been
ignoring net effects of livelihoods on others, and focusing only on the poor
and not on the rich.

For
the future

“Sustainable
livelihoods” are two words put together initially without an explicit
meaning. This had the advantage that
they could be appropriated and given meanings by different actors to suit their
conditions and purposes. The disadvantage
that goes with this is that meanings or implications which are complicating,
inconvenient or threatening can be ignored.
On the other hand, it opened up scope for adding to the framework. As weaknesses or omissions are identified,
more categories are added, two being gender and political capital. The challenge is to add to the scope and
realism of the framework without sacrificing its proven practical utility.

With
this in mind, three aspects stand out for their importance and potential.

The
first concerns other qualities of a livelihood, and of wellbeing besides sustainability. Other adjectives which have been applied to
livelihood include secure and decent.
“Secure” is captured by the way sustainable livelihoods are interpreted,
particularly the attention to shocks, stress and resilience. “Decent” implies social acceptability,
self-respect and not demeaning or involving excessive physical hardship. There are always dangers of overcomplicating
concepts. Beyond these there is, too,
the quality of experience and fulfilment from livelihood activities. For practical purposes, to capture dimensions
like these, checklists can be useful. In
this case, they can be expressed in each context poor people themselves,
indicating what characteristics a good livelihood would have for them.

The
second issue is the concept of net SL effects, and SL-intensity. The point here is that a new livelihood or a
new degree of sustainability for an existing livelihood may be at the expense
of others. The economic concept of
externalities applies here. DFID omitted it
because of the difficulties it presented . However, it could be argued that the concept
of net effects is vital for good choices if policies and programmes to
contribute fully to equity and to the achievement of the international
development targets. The fact that net SL effects are difficult to measure
should be no deterrent. Important
externalities which cannot be measured
can be thought through and estimated. It
is better to think through, estimate and include than to exclude for lack of
means to measure.

There
are international and global dimensions to net SL effects. These concern peace and security, and
international capitalism and trade. War
and civil disturbance are often devastating for livelihoods. International capitalism and trade can be
positive or negative in their net effects. International trade agreements and
freer trade can strengthen and create livelihoods for poor people, or they can
weaken and eliminate them. Both
agricultural subsidies in the North, and the long-term trends of declining
prices for primary products from the South have negative SL effects for poor
people on a prodigious scale. Much of the world economic system is skewed to
diminish and destroy livelihoods of poor people. For their livelihoods to be more adequate
and sustainable, restraining and reversing these tendencies present a massive
potential.

The
third and final issue is the failure to apply SL thinking to the North and to
those who are rich in the South. This
has been disappointing. Sustainable
livelihood, as we defined and explicated it, was a Trojan horse. It was quite readily accepted as a concept
applying to “others”, to the poor and to the South. SLs fit well with poverty programmes, with
the diverse realities of poor people, and with the poverty-reduction priorities
of lenders, donors and Governments. It
has been conveniently overlooked that the livelihoods and lives that were least
environmentally sustainable were “ours” those of the better off, the relatively
rich. Some major advocacy INGOs are
concerned with aspects of this but have not picked up on the concept. This is
surprising. For the very concept which
works so well for the poor can apply with force to the rich. It is obvious but inconvenient to note that
environmentally, at the personal level,
the least sustainable livelihoods and the life styles that go with them
are those of the rich in the North.
Their net source and sink effects on the environment vastly outweigh
those of the poor in the South. Yet, to
our knowledge, personal environmental accounting has not been effectively
promoted even by those like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth who might have
been looked to for such an initiative.

The
challenge, then, is both personal and public.
Are we, those who read this, the relatively rich and well-off, prepared
to adopt the wider definition of sustainability for our livelihoods and life
styles? To make our livelihoods and
lives more sustainable in their effects, both economically through fairer trade
relations, and environmentally through our source and sink impacts? What degrees of short-term irresponsibility,
inconsistency and hypocrisy are we prepared to allow ourselves?[2] To whom do we point the finger?

The ‘idea for development’ is to apply the concept of
environmentally and socially sustainable livelihood to the rich as well as the
poor.

[1] Employment thinking,
however, remained strong. The 1995
Number 3 issue of SID’s journal Development was entitled Employment,
income and sustainable livelihoods but was little concerned with SLs. In this respect it was like the Social
Summit of the same year in
Copenhagen. One of the draft papers for
the Summit had sustainable livelihoods in its title, but was then almost entirely
concerned with the language and concepts of employment, jobs and the workplace.

[2] Lest any reader suppose that
I am “holier than thou” I am rather acutely aware that I am writing this in
Gairloch in Wester Ross in the Northwest of Scotland, having contributed to
greenhouse gases by burning up at least three tanks of petrol in driving here
from the South of England. One question is whether, if there were a system of
personal environmental accounting (including air travel), my behaviour would
change. I believe it would, well, a bit. But perhaps I and others should be shamed into
recognising better the distant implications of our actions for others.